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TGS 2008 Rumor Mill

We round up the latest rumor mongering surrounding this week's big show in Japan.

Every year, the Tokyo Game Show, held in Makuhari Messe, Chiba brings its fair share of big videogame announcements. While the likes of Nintendo traditionally skip this event in favor of E3 and Games Convention, the other major game makers take this opportunity to reveal secret projects, new games, updated franchises and the like. As is the nature of the online gaming community, there are always a number of juicy rumors that surface before the show begins. We've rounded up some of the biggest rumors in one convenient place, so feel free to post your own thoughts about what surprises TGS may hold through the comments down below.

Rumor: Kingdom Hearts III Will Be Announced

This gem was started up by the latest issue of Official PlayStation Magazine and purports that Square Enix's next official collaboration with Disney will be revealed at the show; the kicker being that Kingdom Hearts III will be an exclusive release on PlayStation 3 only. That last part's certainly not hard to believe.

Rumor: New Halo Game to be Shown

When Bungie recently released a teaser trailer, dubbed Halo 3: Keep it Clean, the rumors began to fly as to what this title could be. We know that it is the first game Bungie would make after it parted ways with Microsoft, but now the latest rumors suggest that TGS will be the place where an official announcement regarding this project is made.

Rumor: New Kid Icarus Title to Debut

Filing this one under "really unlikely," there are numerous Nintendo fan sites clinging onto the hope that the "missing-from-E3" announcement of a new Kid Icarus will finally drop on the first day of the show. It's obviously going to be a Nintendo product, so that makes it seem even more unlikely TGS will be the forum for such a big announcement. We're waiting with semi-bated breath here.

Rumor: Metal Gear Solid Existence to be Shown

Another more likely rumor is that Konami's recently trademarked MGS Existence will make its debut at the show this week. The jury's out on if this is going to fall inline with the publisher's penchant to re-release MGS games with bonus content and gameplay tweaks or if this will actually be an all-new MGS game on PlayStation 3. We're tending to lean towards the former rather than the latter.

Rumor: New Game From Team ICO?

This rumor got a lot of ICO fans riled up a few weeks ago when a flash movie surfaced for a game called "ICO 3 The Queen" on the web. Team ICO is the developer behind ICO and Shadow of the Colossus and fans have been waiting a very long time for another game from this outfit. The disclaimer at the bottom of the Flash movie stated "This Flash teaser was only made for an art competition and is not the real thing." But fans are still hopeful that Team ICO's next project will be revealed as part of Sony's new PS3 lineup at the show. Sony is expected to announce no less than nine new PS3 titles, so...

Those are the big ones and we'll be sure to crush them -- or not! -- as the week presses on. GameSpy's pre-show coverage kicks off in earnest tomorrow.